The Spaceman - Freewrite

John was sitting in class one afternoon when suddenly he found himself floating in the void of space.

He first glanced around at the stars gleaming against the pitch black sky all around him. In the next instant he quickly wrapped cold arms around his body.

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After couple of seconds he realized with great fear that he could not breathe.

"Of course not." he thought.

"I'm in space somehow."

He couldn't make himself believe it though. How could he suddenly be floating in space?

After about 5 seconds he blinked back into the classroom.

The students were all still talking and laughing with each other. No one had even noticed that he was gone.

Had he really been in space?

John felt pretty freaked out about this incident all day long.

He knew that his mother wasn't going to pick him up from school today. He had already planned on walking home.

It was a couple of miles in the heat with his heavy backpack but it gave him a lot of time to reflect on the earlier possible daydream.

He spent the night watching TV and thinking things over.

By the time he was crawling into bed he decided that he must have just had a strange incident involving mental fatigue.

John woke up feeling incredibly cold.

Looking all around he realized with fear and irritation that he was trapped floating again. Hanging there in space.

"I must be losing my damn mind." he thought.

Within a few seconds he was back in bed.

He never did get back to sleep that night.

He told his mom about the incident but she didn't really believe him. She wanted him to see a therapist and he wasn't too thrilled at the prospect.

"Maybe I really am losing my mind though." he wasn't very happy about anything these days.

For about 2 weeks John would occasionally blink into space while he was at school, in bed, at restaurants, or at any number of different places.

He was always scared that this time would be the time that lasted more than a few seconds and that he would run out of precious oxygen.

He was also scared that none of this was real. He didn't know what he thought was better, for this to be real or for it be be some kind of dream.

It wasn't until about 18 days in that he blinked onto a spaceship instead of into the cold darkness of space.

The ship was as bright as you could imagine. It was laid out just like how he would imagine a Star Trek vessel to be laid out.

He looked all around in absolute wonder. Of course, he could breathe, and he was happy to not feel any sensation of suffering this time.

"Captain." a young woman dressed all in white spoke softly.

Another man with the blue uniform hugged him tightly.

"We never thought we'd find you again. We've been searching for months now."

John didn't understand.

They explained to him that he had gone on a mission to try to understand another culture but that his two companions had disappeared and were thought to have been killed.

He apparently had been taken captive and made to believe that he was someone's son.

It just didn't make any sense to him. He knew who his mother was. He knew who his family was.

He wasn't a captain on a spaceship. This was crazy.

John was wrong though.

It turned out that Captain John Mercer was in for almost a full year of therapy sessions.